Another Dimension

András Schiff in Conversation with Eszter Rádai

 

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May I ask for your views on musical life in Hungary? You have lived abroad for such a long time, does the grass look a bit greener from there than to someone living on the inside?

Even from the outside it is not all that green. But the meadow was never truly green anyway: this was always a sorry place, and there is nothing odd about that because musical life also reflects the conditions that prevail in society and the economy. We are inclined to shrug it off, saying that it is because Hungary is a small country. Yet there is a long list of European countries that are smaller
than Hungary, so we should not be too proud of that smallness; it is not profitable, let alone productive, to use that as an excuse for all our faults. What characterises all areas of the arts in Hungary today, as I see it, is the intensity of acrimony: there are tremendously talented people in all fields, yet in some way they are not tolerant, they don't sit easily next to one another. There is a vast amount of intrigue, envy and malice. People take no delight in the successes of others. Just look at the furore that was kicked up in Hungary over the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Imre Kertész.

Did that surprise you? Did you really think that everyone, without exception, would jump for joy?

Yes, I have to admit I was surprised. I had my illusions, it may well be that I am naďve. But when I heard - because I count myself fortunate to be on close terms with Imre Kertész, who invited me and my wife to attend the prize-giving ceremony in Stockholm - that the secretariat of the Nobel Prize Committee, most unusually in the history of the Prize, had been inundated by letters and
e-mail messages of protest from the laureate's fellow-countrymen, I was both amazed and saddened.

I understand that exactly the same thing happened with the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Albert Szent-Györgyi in 1937.

From which country did the protests come?

From Hungary.

Likewise? Then it seems to be a Hungarian speciality. I have observed similar instances in Austria, where I lived for many years. I suppose it must be a "Habsburg thing", something very K. und K., with the difference that in Austria people are that bit more honey-tongued, so it is not quite so conspicuous.

You mean that we are less hypocritical? That Austrians who think like that have a sense of shame, whereas their counterparts in Hungary don't feel any shame?

Not exactly. It is not general, of course, but let us not pretend that this sort of thing does not exist. It always did, and I have always found it very disturbing. It was one of the reasons why I left Hungary in 1979, because it always put me dreadfully out of sorts.

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I just cannot imagine that Bartók's compositional mastery, for example, would have been disputed by other Hungarian composers at the time. Of course, he then counted as an avant-garde composer, and the wider public of those days, beyond a very narrow coterie within the profession and in the arts, cannot be said to have been great Bartók fans. Yet for the latter he shone like a beacon without in any way detracting from the merits of Kodály or Dohnányi. I don't think musical life then was as cliquish as it is now, it was after the war that it became such. It's very odd. Now that I am talking about it, of course, I have my apprehensions about this being blown up into a "Jewish versus non-Jewish" thing.

Do you think that still plays a role?

I don't know. In the case of Kurtág, Kertész and myself, I believe it does. It is not possible to dodge the issue of anti-Semitism.

And did that have a part in your decision to move abroad?

Yes, but - how can I put this - it is a very complex matter. One of the reasons why I admire Imre Kertész and his works so much is that I identify completely with his thinking. The fatelessness that he writes about is also mine. I did not have to live through Auschwitz, thank God, though I did so at second hand. My mother and her family were deported, though not to Auschwitz, because by some miracle that particular railway line had been taken out by bombing, so they ended up in Austria... They returned, and they tried to bury the whole experience within themselves, to assimilate. All the same...

Were you, too, brought up in that spirit?

Totally.

Were you not even aware that you were Jewish?

Not that, because there was an occasion when the kids next door told me that they could not play football with me any more because I was Jewish. That is when I heard the word for the first time. It may have been in 1958 or '59. I went home in tears, but not before asking the kids what it meant, and why they were calling me that. They replied, "Because you're a Jew, and you Jews killed Jesus!" That was their explanation.

That happened in Budapest?

Yes, in Buda's verdant Twelfth District. I went home, and my parents explained what it meant to be a Jew, and that I was one. They were unable to offer much in the way of comfort, however, because the whole thing was quite incomprehensible to me, since I had no role in it: I had not been the cause of it, yet in some way I had. I did not have the slightest notion about my roots, but from then onwards I was aware that an insurmountable barrier divided me from others, from the other side, yet I still did not know why that side was different. That, in a word, is the state of fatelessness, and for me it will be a problem to the end of my days, because I have to get to the bottom of what it actually is...

Is that why you don't really feel at home here?

I am sorry to say it, but it's true. I cannot do anything about it, though I bear no resentment. This is not my home, though I can forgive but not forget. That is why in connection with the Holocaust - and this is most important - one should forgive, but one should not imagine (as the words of the national anthem have it) that "bygone sins are all atoned". They have not been atoned at all. Not so long ago I heard that Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy promised Imre Kertész that at last "we are going to take a square look at this": that has yet to happen, even so many decades after the event. Dreadful things happened here, and still, whoever one speaks to about those times, everyone trots out a story about his or her dad or grandad hiding this person or rescuing that one. Well, if everyone was saving Jews, who on earth committed those horrific things that my grandmother told me about? Mother did not tell me anything, because she believed so strongly in assimilation, and still does to this day, even though there is no reason to believe in it. My own family then lived in Debrecen, and the deportations started earlier there. The entire family was loaded up onto a horse-drawn cart and delivered to the ghetto. All the Debrecen neighbours came out to gather in front of the house and jeer, making gestures that "throats were going to be slit", and they had already started running into the house to carry off stuff, candelabra and anything else. So, that also happened. That also needs to be talked about. I don't know how it is possible to calm those feelings. In London I had a dear old friend, Uncle Lajos, and he said to me that "the country that did not kill me solely because I did not give it the chance to do so is not my home." There is no answer to that; but equally I could not say that we have no wish to assimilate, though it may be better if I only say that in my own name. When it comes down to it, Hungarian is my native language, and I adore the language and its literature, especially its poetry, and then again one thinks and dreams in Hungarian, whilst telling jokes is only truly fun in Hungarian. It is a strange business, then.

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Did it cross your mind at the time that the country to which you had so demonstratively said "No!" was also the home and native land of musicians whom you hold to be the very greatest?

Of course. But the "No!" that I said then, I continue to maintain, because it has proved to be the right course. I am not saying what I am saying now because I suppose it has any effect or carries any weight. For me it is purely a question of conscience. It is just that I am not prepared to keep my mouth shut. I can't help it. I would not have been able to look at myself in the mirror afterwards if, after the choice fell on Haider, I were to have gone to a "Schubertiad" where the wealthy middle-class public tog themselves up in their dirndls and listen to Schubert with blissful smiles on their faces. It would have turned my stomach. Schubert is not about that. Most of my colleagues, I'm sad to say, are not disturbed by this; they were not plagued by such considerations and just carried on concertising. I always find myself having to think back to the Hitler days, even whilst being well aware that the situation is in no way comparable. All the same, it is wrong to lose one's sensitivity. We musicians need to respond like sensitive membranes to what is happening in society or politics, because we are not dolts who will play anywhere for anyone, if paid to do so. One cannot do that, it's degrading.

I am sure you are acquainted with the point of view of those who think differently: those who question whether one should stay truer to one's politics than to art. Is it right to sacrifice one's art on the altar of politics? That is the subject of Klaus Mann's and István Szabó's Mephisto and also of Taking Sides, Szabó's film about Furtwängler.

Furtwängler is a very good example. He is my favourite conductor. I haven't seen the film, but I did see the stage play by Ronald Harwood on which it is based, both in London and in Vienna, so I know it well. It's a good play, because it
poses the question of how an artist should behave when in such a situation. Furtwängler was no Nazi, but unfortunately he was not a man of the calibre that a musician of such high standing should have been in that situation. He was no Nazi, yet he was delighted that rivals disappeared, leaving him alone amongst the great conductors - and this is where we get back to the subject - on the podium. Toscanini refused to appear on any German or Austrian platform, whilst the rest, Jews like Klemperer, Bruno Walter and Kleiber, were forced to emigrate, so only Furtwängler stayed, because the then young Karajan, who also stayed behind, could not yet be mentioned in the same breath. That situation suited him down to the ground. Yet he could have done something, because he did have the chance of not giving way to temptation but instead travelling to the United States, or else opting for voluntary exile in Switzerland.

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I know that the composers you admire are not always present in your life and repertoire - Mozart, for example, you have often said, was your childhood love, whilst you were always working on Chopin but only started to play his works in public after reaching a certain age, and you have put off playing the Beethoven sonatas until your fifties... What is it that determines whether a piece of music is a childhood love or a mature passion?

On that point it is my instincts that dictate... I have always felt Bach to be extremely important to me, and I always had an affinity, from a very young age, for Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, but not for Beethoven - that was always a more difficult business. Harder? Well, everyone says, as I do, that playing Mozart is the hardest of all, because he is so simple, so unaffected and self-explanatory. If a child has a feeling for Mozart one cannot hope for a more perceptive, authentic interpretation than that. According to some very shrewd heads, only a child or a wise old musician can really play Mozart; between the two extremes it becomes very tough. To put it another way, one cannot learn how to play Mozart, that's why it is so tough. One can learn how to play Beethoven, but it is almost as tough. Beethoven lived a comparatively long time, leading a very hard life, full of struggles, and all that is there in the music. I am familiar with Mozart's manuscripts, of course, and it is simply untrue that he never made revisions. Nor does Mozart's music have that porcelain immutability that snobs are fond of talking about: it is full of drama. But there is no struggle in it, nor such violent outpourings of passion as with Beethoven. It's a commonplace, of course, but it is customary to compare Beethoven to Michelangelo, because there is something sculpturesque about him. Mozart is more like a great painter; there are no unhewn granite and marble-like surfaces in his music, whereas Beethoven is all about that. With him one has to grapple with the material, and to do that one has to mature - at least as far as I am concerned. That was not easy for me, and it is only now that the time has come when I truly understand, but now I am an ever greater admirer of Beethoven's music. Beethoven was God for Pál Kadosa, my teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music. Boy that I was, I was close to outright rebellion over that. "Why is he constantly yakking on about Beethoven", I thought to myself, when here we have Schubert, whose music then was hardly being played by anyone at the Academy. So, almost as a protest, I started to involve myself with the Schubert sonatas. Beethoven was someone to keep a mental note of. Everything was determined by romanticism: if one read the writings of the two key music critics of those days, Bence Szabolcsi and Aladár Tóth, it was Beethoven, Beethoven, all the time, the Fifth Symphony this, the Eroica that... Of course, Beethoven is not quite as simple as that either: he too has his lyrical and his epic and his dramatic and a great many other kinds of works. There is his An die ferne Geliebte song cycle, which has to be seen as the font for Schumann's entire romantic Lieder corpus, the song cycles. But somehow the idea that Beethoven was a deadly serious composer had become implanted in the collective consciousness of music criticism. That disconcerted me at the time, but now, with an older head - though my love for Bach, Schubert, Haydn and Mozart is unchanged - I have at last grasped that there is something elemental in Beethoven. He has something marvellous to say, something utterly magical and at the same time utterly human. With Mozart I have the feeling that I am dealing with an otherworldly genius; one feels oneself to be little more than a clodhopper, hardly daring to interpret him and constantly feeling oneself to be maladroit. Mozart resists exaggeration of any kind; if one misjudges the character or tempo, even just a little bit, the whole thing falls apart.

One is feeble in comparison with Mozart?

Indeed. Beethoven is much more generous. He is miraculous as well, but he is one of us, the most outstanding amongst us. Someone once put it very nicely: Beethoven is on the way to heaven, whereas Mozart comes from heaven.

Yet you yourself once said in an interview that "the spiritual message of music is most discernible in Bach", and you added, "It cannot be pure chance that neither Bach, nor Haydn, nor Beethoven, nor Schubert was an atheist."

How can I put it? That is again something that springs from my own fatelessness. Because the reason for it is music, art, and that is why I cannot be an atheist. I just cannot imagine or conceive that this is all just matter: there has to be something spiritual in it. Those men have long been dead, but their works are still alive amongst us as eternal messages. I believe in something transcendental... something more, stronger than matter. The great men to whom I am most indebted were not atheists. Even Bartók, though his earlier works give no hint of it, in the second movement of his Piano Concerto No. 3, the Adagio religioso, written when he was close to death - there it is literally present, a wonderful, pared-down chorale melody, which can be traced back to the Beethoven late string quartets and, naturally, to Bach...

 

Eszter Rádai
is on the staff of the weekly Élet és Irodalom. She has published several volumes of interviews.